High on sugar & silly string at Pike Place Market

What happens when three kids get a $20 bill to spend at Pike Place Market in less than a hour?

A sugar rush, a mad dash through the DownUnder — and reminders of the magic that the Market holds for children. Mila and Manny Apostol, who opened an Asian grocery store called Oriental Mart across from the big Market clock in 1974, have seen their children, and now their grandchildren, grow up at the Market. The older grandkids work at the family business, but they all find time to entertain themselves in the playground that is Pike Place.

Just for fun, and for nostalgia's sake, we gave three of the Apostol grandkids $20, informed them the money wasn't for their college funds, and instructed them to run wild through the Market, showing us their favorite things, places and people.

On the hottest day of the summer so far, the kids got to do something cool. In the process, we got to relive our own childhoods through them:

Brianna Mori, 14, leads the charge, grabbing the hand of her baby sister, 4-year-old Alyssa, as cousin Jordan Rosas, 11, tags along.

They fuel up at Seattle's Best Coffee, where Jordan orders a Cookie with Oreo shake (minus the coffee) and the sisters share a raspberry Italian soda. Jordan, recognizing an opportunity, also stops at The Confectional, which sells mini-cheesecakes about the size of a cupcake. He chooses raspberry white chocolate.

Alyssa passes on cheesecake, having already ducked into Sweetie's Candy for gummy fish and Pop Rocks.

Sugar-snap peas, Penn Cove mussels, a bouquet of lilies, a bar of soap made with honey — they just don't excite the senses of kids like they do adults. But other stuff at the Market does, and kids seem to have an innate knack for sniffing it out within the Market maze.

Trails almost always lead to the DownUnder, a three-floor fun forest of retail shops beneath the main arcade that has enchanted children for generations.

Making magic

If Willie Wonka lived in Seattle, he undoubtedly would have built his chocolate factory down here.

Amid the curio shops that target tourists are the comic books, baseball cards, magic tricks, jawbreakers and all-day suckers that keep kids riveted.

"I want to see a magic trick," Alyssa tells her big sister as cousin Jordan masters the technique of eating his cheesecake and drinking his shake at the same time. It has to do with tucking the shake under his arm, which then frees a hand to hold the fork to eat the cheesecake. Brilliant!

The three kids hide their goodie stash beneath a rack of posters outside the entrance of Pike Place Magic Shop, as neither food nor drink is allowed inside the store. They head straight for the photo booth, where they pose for four shots that print in a color strip for $3. Jordan puffs his cheeks to look goofy and then the three of them make hand gestures to try to look tough.

As the photos are processing, Alyssa asks for money to have her palm read by Zambini, an electric fortune-telling machine.

"It's a waste of money," Jordan says. "The fortune doesn't come true."

"It predicted that I was going to have a boyfriend or something, and I still don't have one," Brianna adds.

Brianna puts a coin in a similar machine, called Match Maker, which enlightens her that she should search for a filthy-rich 7-foot-tall Einstein for a future mate.

Then the kids go to the counter, staffed by professional magician Tony Comito.

"They all have to come in here eventually," Comito says of the shop that has drawn in children since 1974.

"Pink silly string, please," Brianna says, pulling out a $5 bill.

"A normal childhood"

Children and Pike Place Market have gone little hand in big hand since the Market launched in 1907.

Before child-labor laws, children worked strenuous jobs at the Market, such as helping load and unload crates of produce for farmers. Other children, many of them orphaned, worked at the Market's horse stables, where animals used for transporting goods to and from Pike Place were kept. Children of farmers and other merchants often stuck close to their parents at the Market.

When the two oldest Apostol grandchildren were infants and their mothers worked at Oriental Mart, they stayed at the store, resting inside a banana box with a blanket spread along the bottom. Market kids also become children of an extended Pike Place family.

The Apostol grandchildren often visit Ruby Francisco, who sells custom jewelry and other wearable art at Ruby's Seattle Gift Gallery in the DownUnder. Francisco's mother was friends with Mila Apostol in the Philippines.

Oriental Mart opens to the street, so on bitterly cold days, the youngest of the Apostol grandchildren stay with their "Auntie Ruby," whose DownUnder shop is much warmer.

One of Brianna's jobs at Oriental Mart, which expanded in the mid-'80s to include a lunch counter, is to make a daily run to Pike Place Fish Co. across the way. She can barely see over the counter, but workers there call her by name as they fill her order of salmon tips.

Brianna says working at the Market means her weekends aren't always as free as some of her middle-school friends "who get to hang out on the couch and stuff." But being a Market kid has its perks.

"I have what I think is a normal childhood," she says. "I've got more stuff to do, but I also get to do more stuff."

Growing up at the Market

Joy Mori, the mother of Brianna and Alyssa as well as middle sister A.J., also grew up at the Market.

Times were different back in the early 1980s. Mila and Manny Apostol gave her free rein within the Market, including all levels of the DownUnder, but drew the line at First Avenue, which was known as Skid Row back then because of some sleazy storefronts.

Mori restricts her kids to the upper level of the DownUnder because she knows merchants there who can keep an eye of them.

The extended family for the Apostol grandchildren, however, also extends outside the Market's boundaries.

Brianna and her cousin, 13-year-old Gregori Rosas, snuck out to buy Mori a gift this past Mother's Day. When they arrived at the See's Candies store four blocks away, police officers were patrolling the area. "One of them kept looking at me and looking at me, and I thought that was kind of weird," Brianna recalls.

A beat officer had recognized Brianna and Gregori and immediately called Oriental Mart, asking Mori, "Hey, do you know where your kids are at?"

So much for their surprise.

"It kind of spoiled Mother's Day," Brianna says.

Actually, Mori says, it made it more memorable.

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com